When Father Andrew said the Last Rites over both of us, Nancy tried to stop him. “My husband,” she pleaded, “only my husband Jake is dying. Leave Jonas alone.” But he would not be stopped. We all know. Why pretend? God cannot be fooled. I joked: “I guess now I’m good to go, too.” Charlotte turned away. Nancy looked down. No-one… Read more →
The Muse of Paranoia, rarely seen, is not invisible. Her supplicants are distinguished by stares intent not so much on as beyond their objects of scrutiny: documents fanned in suggestive disarray, dining utensils speckled in rust, unfamiliar hair spooling from a faucet’s damp handle, small talk rendered hieroglyphic on sleepless reflection. The impassive expression of those inspired is broken by… Read more →
It’s a Tuesday when he wakes up and he realizes he is very much alone. The window, left open during the night, lets in a cool breeze and it ripples the Moroccan scarf she hung there many months ago. He glances around the room and he sees that the silver backed hairbrush that belonged to her mother is missing. The… Read more →
At first what people were saying was that it happened in a shop. That he was a stranger. He’d had a small gun that he held to her back. Attention turned next to the middle-aged man who lived out on the island. He wore a captain’s hat and was always driving up and down the causeway, his car filled with… Read more →
Occupy They weren’t really squatters, per se. He looked at it like it was payback, dividends from years of working shithole jobs in exhausting Wall Street firms. And it wasn’t so bad, better than jail. An interesting influx of dwellers. Late night poker games. Until she moved in. Until the chanting started. Until the first time he thought: perhaps I’m… Read more →
Stella Richter’s Boston friends said her Manhattan apartment reminded them of Miami Beach. They meant it as a slur, and she took it that way. She still played her father’s Bechstein in the corner of the living room every afternoon—Handel, Mozart, Bach—she knew the pieces all by heart and hardly missed a note though she hadn’t taken a lesson in… Read more →
Technically, Maura and Steve hadn’t abducted Lionel, their nephew, a boy not yet self-conscious enough to pull down the tube socks reaching up to his pale knees. Maura knew the skin below those knees, down a little at the very meat of the calves, was flecked white like the underbelly of a newt, which was probably why he wore his… Read more →